


hitting heavens high

by littledust



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-11
Updated: 2014-11-11
Packaged: 2018-02-25 00:12:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2601467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littledust/pseuds/littledust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snippets from Jo Harvelle's life as she grows up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hitting heavens high

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting on my hard drive for at least six years. I pulled it out and finally finished it. Title from "Ecstasy" by PJ Harvey.

You are apples and ice cream, August sweetness in jean cutoffs and a rumpled T-shirt. You were supposed to take a bath after playing all day, but the sun hasn't gone down yet, so it's still day, and _then_ you heard Daddy's car in the driveway. You burst out of the bathroom singing, "Daddy's home, Daddy's home!"

Mommy hollers, "Joanna Beth, you get into that tub this instant!" but nothing can stop you, running barefoot across the floor and down the steps and into the grass, rough and heat-brown against your feet. There's Daddy by the truck, Daddy who sets his gear on the ground to scoop you up and twirl you around. It's better than a ride at the fair, like the one where you tried not to cry because you're not a _baby_ even though you could hit the ground any minute. You're safe here. You know Daddy will never let you fall.

"Bill, aren't you hot in that old jacket?" Mommy says when she comes out, but she sounds less mad and tired already, which is how she always gets if Daddy has to go away for more than a week.

Daddy grins and says, "Hot, but fashionable."

You remember something a hunter said the other day and offer, "I'm sweating like a whore in church."

The silence stretches just long enough for you to start worrying before Daddy bursts out laughing and Mommy shakes her head and says, "I'm gonna have to have another talk with Chuck about language." But after that she laughs, too, so you venture a smile of your own.

You are six years old.

This is how you like to remember your family when it was whole.

*

Your daddy is dead and it's time to grow up.

Growing up means adding another candle to the cake but otherwise it's a lot of throwing stuff away: little girl drawings of princesses, cassette tapes full of Disney songs, Lisa Frank folders for school. It's all junk filling two garbage bags, which you haul out to the trash. The hunters at the bar all act like it's so cute, a little girl with such a serious face, and you can't find the words to tell them that you're old before your time, that you grew up knowing what lurked in the dark but now you know that no one is safe from it.

You go out when you can and practice with your daddy's knives. You can't go as often as you like because Mommy keeps an eye on you, keeps buying you school supplies with unicorns on them. You repeat a hunter's story about a unicorn in France goring five people before somebody put the thing out of its misery. Secretly you think you could do that. Maybe not kill a unicorn, but go around putting people out of their misery, hunting just like your daddy. It's something to keep you going when you miss your target nine times out of ten, something to keep you going until it drops to eight, then seven, then four.

Mommy catches you, of course, but she doesn't say anything at first, just goes sad and quiet like she's been more and more lately. "Joanna Beth, you better be careful with those. I don't want any dead squirrels on my conscience."

You roll your eyes; you hate it when she uses your full name. It's a way of making you smaller, of shrinking straight back into your spine the inch you've grown since Daddy saw you last. "I'm _being_ careful, Mom... Mom."

And just like that, now you're too old to call her Mommy.

She nods, accepting the change, but you feel guilty at the look on her face, like she just lost something she'll never get back.

*

You lose your virginity in the same week you get your driver's license. You don't aim to hit the two milestones so close together, but, well. A boy in your gym class kisses you behind the bleachers on Monday. You take your test on Wednesday, knees knocking under the dash, where you pray to God the DMV guy doesn't see. You meet up with the boy on Friday night. You park your mother's truck right next to his, then climb into his truck.

"Your mother as crazy as they say?" is how he opens.

You think about punching him in his fool mouth. You could split his lip easy, and he would never be able to tell his friends that the freaky girl in their classes beat him up. But you know what the other kids say about you, and you know that when he kissed you, part of you wanted to know what happened next. You woke up that night with your hand between your legs imagining it.

"She drives me crazier than she'll ever be," you say. You're proud of how you sound: sullen and cold, like bothering to speak is a chore.

The boy likes it. He smiles, says, "Hey, c'mere." He kisses you again, and again, and you open your mouth to his. You're hungry, ghost hungry for some human contact, for bare skin under your fingertips that doesn't belong to you. You used your driver's license to drive way out far, where no one knows you, and buy condoms. You're not stupid.

(You're not stupid in a lot of ways. You know what they'll say about you at school on Monday. You know, and you do it anyway. Let it be your act of teenage stupidity.)

The first time, it's uncomfortable for you and he finishes early, red in the face. You finally come the second time, insistently guiding his fingers to the right places. _Yes._ Now you can walk away saying you got something out of the experience.

It's the only thing you'll be saying. The boy doesn't talk to you again, and whispers trail behind you for weeks until something more interesting comes along. You pull your driver's license out when it gets bad, and tell yourself that if you truly can't stand it anymore, you can always drive away.

*

You're supposed to go to college, but the only monsters there are midterms and the ghosts of students who died on stupid dares. You come back to the Roadhouse because it's the only place that you can picture as home anymore: the old jukebox you can charm into playing your favorite songs, the names of the beers on tap, the gurgle of liquor into a tumbler, the feel of a shotgun sure in your hands.

(In college, your roommate saw the way you handled a bottle of Jack and asked you to make her a margarita. You stared at her. Licked your lips, nervous. _Never made one,_ you admit. But waitresses, you know how to recover. _Rum and coke's pretty sweet. How 'bout that?_ )

They don't teach you how to hunt in college. You could learn a trick or two from the girls in your classes, the ones who spent high school sneaking around on their parents and are already over the whole college freedom thing. You drink with them a few times, make out sloppy on top of an old picnic table. Your mother still won't let you do a goddamn thing, and she makes it clear that your failure to graduate is a mistake no amount of scrubbing the bathrooms will fix.

The forces push you and pull at you. Some hunters walk in, and the wounds on their bodies make you almost agree with your mother: stay home, where the monsters probably won't get you. Some hunters walk in, and their stories are about helping people with nowhere to turn, about sifting through clues sometimes hundreds of years old. They don't glory in their work like football stars; they honor it, and they honor their fallen comrades. Some hunters walk in, lonely for anything that walks in on two legs and won't take out a piece of you. You want to sleep with the handsome ones, the ones with the wide mouths and the clever hands. You don't. Ash is right there, and your mother, and somewhere, the ghost of the home and the father you used to know.

It's just not right to use the Roadhouse that way. You pump it for information instead while you pour the beer. You have notebooks of research, recycled from the English 101 class you slept through every Monday and Wednesday. Somewhere in between your notes on purifying incantations are the remnants of the right way to structure a college essay. Ghosts of your college career.

Your mother probably knows what you're doing. No one would ever call Ellen Harvelle stupid. She only ever talks to you about washing dishes, wiping tables, sweeping floors. Sooner or later, one of you is going to break.

*

The Winchester brothers don't just break all your rules. They blow them up without even getting hit by the shrapnel. You're left bleeding from a handful of words and a TNT smile. Maybe destruction is necessary for creation, but they wrecked so much of your life. You should have known better about it all: following a hunter around with some calf-eyed crush, striking out alone with baby doll curls and half a day's worth of experience. You're lucky to be alive. You're lucky that your mother is still willing to talk to you.

But that's the thing. You keep hunting. You stick it out, and you get smarter, and you get better. When you think you can't go on any more, you call home, and your mother always picks up.

You talk to each other like adults, now. How you're doing, what you're hunting, what you caught on TV last night. You tell her jokes about eating 7-11 for dinner every time you're out too late on Sundays. She promises to mail you a hot plate, as long as you promise not to burn your motel down. You get to know each other as adults, all over hissing landline connections and long stretches of time when you're too busy to call home.

But you always call, and it always ends like this: "I love you, Mom."

You're apples and the deep red-gold of October leaves, with your hair pulled back and your old jeans stuffed into workman's boots. You carry salt in the pockets of the good winter coat your mother told you to buy. You'll be ready, come winter.


End file.
